Shame about the highlight, but I love the colours

C&C welcomed.

Lovely shot- wonderful colours !
Brian v.

I like the color as well -looks like autumn

Nice warm light. I like it.

Kenny

Thanks guys!

Is there anything I could have done to avoid getting the highlight? I thought about trying to get a shadow to fall across the lb, but that just made things too dark. This was taken at ISO 1250 as it is.

GillR wrote:
Is there anything I could have done to avoid getting the highlight?


Possibly change the angle, so that the sun wouldn't be reflecting right back into the camera. Could you see the highlight in the view finder?

Dalantech wrote:

Possibly change the angle, so that the sun wouldn't be reflecting right back into the camera. Could you see the highlight in the view finder?

Yes, I could see the highlight. Despite the fact that it looks like the leaf was hanging in mid-air it was on a big bush in the middle of a row of bushes, so my options for position were somewhat limited.

I think I also got too carried away by wanting to get the composition you see here, and should have put more time into looking at alternative angles. Shame my husband wasn't with me with me - he comes in useful for standing between my target and the sun!

GillR wrote:
... Despite the fact that it looks like the leaf was hanging in mid-air it was on a big bush in the middle of a row of bushes, so my options for position were somewhat limited.


That's always a tough situation to shoot in. The problem with shading the critter is that it might have taken off.

But there might be a way to handle this one in post: I use Photoshop Elements, and in that program I can set the clone stamp tool to "darken" and the opacity to 10%. Select a brush that's just large enough to cover the area that's blown out, and select one that's got a soft edge. Then using the alt key and the mouse select an area that has a similar color close to the area that's blown and then clone stamp over the hot spot a few times by clicking on it with your mouse. What you want to do is reduce the hot spot, and not cover it up completely.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get it right with the camera -always look for ways to do the majority of your post processing when you press the shutter. But for those times when you can't...

Dalantech wrote:


But there might be a way to handle this one in post: I use Photoshop Elements, and in that program I can set the clone stamp tool to "darken" and the opacity to 10%. Select a brush that's just large enough to cover the area that's blown out, and select one that's got a soft edge. Then using the alt key and the mouse select an area that has a similar color close to the area that's blown and then clone stamp over the hot spot a few times by clicking on it with your mouse. What you want to do is reduce the hot spot, and not cover it up completely.

Ah-ha! What a great tip, thank you I'll have a play with that later. And also try harder to get it right in-camera next time

I love the composition, and the colors are wonderful and vivid.